Cryptozoology
by Circeus
Summary: [Adventure 02] Daisuke is lost in boredom, but is it really wise to follow Chibimon's ideas to get out of it?
1. Lost in Boredom

**Note:** This was originally written for a round robin fic. Unfortunately, the collective thing never took off, and I kept having ideas, so I expanded on it, and here it goes.

Daisuke flopped back on his bed, his face blank in expression, and just laid there staring at a crack in the ceiling. After a while, he flipped over and looked through the window. A few clouds went past over Odaiba Bay as he watched on.

"Aw man... I'm bored!" he sighed.

A high-pitched voice squealed in delight. Daisuke turned to see his partner, Chibimon, happily hammering away at a video game controller.

"I don't see how you could. This world is great!"

It was easy for the small, easily impressed baby II digimon to say that. But to Daisuke, things in the Real World had lost their shiny when he'd discovered the Digital World. Once you knew there's a whole world to save just beyond your computer, and that you're the one _chosen_ to save it, few things could really get as exciting. The game bleeped a last few times before a "Game Over" graphic flashed across the screen. Chibimon moaned and keeled over dramatically.

"No! It can't end like this! I was going to beat it! I was!" he protested.

Then he noticed his depressive partner and he blinked. He had never actually seen his partner sad. Angry or annoyed, sure, but outright sad? Never! It just wasn't Daisuke. The blue digimon hopped into the bed and settled atop his partner's head.

"Daisuke, you know I don't like it when you make that face! Remember what happened with RedVeggiemon? Come on, cheer up, emo kid!" he chastised playfully.

"That's it. Next time I leave you here, I unplug the web connection," the boy deadpanned in return.

"Aaaaaaaaaaawwww!" the Digimon protested.

"That way you won't go around picking up silly lines, or bidding on Ebay using my father's credit card number," Daisuke added.

He rolled his eyes at the thought. It was lucky his father bought so much stuff off the site that the three digit transaction had gone barely unnoticed. The Digimon bounced to the desk and grabbed a pair of golden-platted castanets.

"But they were shinyyyyyyyyy!"

He stressed his point by using one as a mirror to reflect the sun in his partner's eyes. Daisuke put a hand in front of himself to defend his retina. His partner retaliated by striking them together with a clear sound.

"And they make a nifty sound too!"

He repeated the act in rhythm, starting to vocalize off-key. Daisuke's eyes widened. The last thing he wanted was to find an excuse for _that_. He snatched the instrument from the Digimon's hands, if they could be so called.

"Not now!" he hissed, causing the blue creature to recoil back. "And besides, you're doing it all wrong!" he added.

His right hand raised above him and he began to click the two wooden parts together absent-mindedly. Chibimon looked on in awe.

"Wow! You're good, Daisuke! I didn't know you could do that! Who taught you?" he asked.

"Takeru," Daisuke answered without looking back at him.

The digimon goggled at him in bafflement. Daisuke rolled his eyes and tossed the small instrument away. It landed behind the computer screen after hitting the wall.

"Long story. I don't want to get into it," the boy sighed out.

But Chibimon would not let himself be defeated so easily. He figured if Daisuke wasn't going to have any fun, he might as well do.

"Hey, let's get out! There's a whole world out there to explore!" he proposed.

"I don't feel like going out today, Chibimon," the boy moaned.

He turned onto his back, forcing the small digimon to hop away. Chibimon frowned. Usually the mere prospect of getting away from cleaning up his room was sufficient to cheer the twelve-years old.

"How come?" he inquired.

"Well, you see... It just feels like nothing can give me the rush I feel when I'm in the Digital World. When I'm back home, all I want to do is go back. But I know we can't. As much as I'd like to, I can't spend all my days there."

The little digimon racked his brain to try and figure out something that would interest his partner. It wasn't as easy as it sound. There are three states in which a Baby II-level digimon might be, and "focused" wasn't exactly one of them. He tried to remember what he did to entertain himself when Daisuke wasn't around. Keeping his focus wasn't easy, but he eventually had an idea.

"Hey!" he said, hopping in front of Daisuke. "You know, when I get really bored, what I do?"

"You sing, usually. The neighbours complain a lot about it too," Daisuke answered.

Chibimon could feel a large bead of sweat forming on his forehead.

"Well, sometimes. But usually I just go and think of something I don't know, and then I go out and try to figure it out!" he said happily.

"Oh... So that's what happened to the toaster!" the boy exclaimed.

Another sweatdrop went down the side of Chibimon's face.

"Well, is there something you've always wanted to know?" he just asked his partner.

"Well, I've always wanted to know if..."

Daisuke's eyes glazed over for a moment. When they focused back on him, Chibimon could tell this was going to be an interesting day. That sparkle in his partner's eye was unmistakable sign that he had gotten an Idea with a capital I. He hopped excitedly.

"So, what are we waiting for! Let's go out and find out!" he spurred.

Daisuke was rumbling across the room, pulling various items out of the piles that covered the floor completely and throwing them in his schoolbag. He snatched the Digimon and ran out of the apartment excitedly, slamming the door behind him.

"Hey, was that your brother?" Mr. Motomiya asked Jun from the living room.

Jun was sitting at the kitchen table and trying to figure out her algebra homework. She blinked at the closed door before realizing that she was the one being addressed.

"Yeah... I think..."

Mr. Motomiya sighed.

"I'll prepare the first aid kit. If he's so excited about it, it'll probably end badly for someone."

Outside, Daisuke was running for Odaiba Bay.

"So Daisuke, were are we going?" Chibimon asked earnestly.

"Well..." Daisuke answered. "Have you ever heard about sewer crocodiles?"


	2. Science Project

**Disclaimer:** Advantage is only taken of the characters while a slurry of lawyers are not looking this way. I don't own them.

Miyako help up the notepad to her face. Next to her, Takeru was calling instructions to Patamon, a good ten feet below.

"That's it, fill it with water!"

Patamon rolled his eyes as he dunked the beaker in the murky saltwater below him for the sixth time. He flew back to his partner and handed him the water, which Takeru took with a gloved hand.

"What are you doing this for anyway?" Poromon asked

He hovered over the girl's shoulders, looking at Miyako's notes. He couldn't understand anything of it, but he did not despair in learning to read this human stuff one day.

"It's for a science project, whatever that's supposed to be," Patamon answered.

Takeru was deeply focused on dividing the newly collected samples between several smaller test-tubes. Miyako, in the meantime, was still scribbling furiously away at the notepad.

"Science? Oh... That can't be good..." Poromon commented.

To the spherical ball of feathers, "science" typically involved Miyako destroying something in the most unexpected way. Her hair still had not completely recovered from her last chemistry homework. Takeru looked over to her.

"Thank again, Miyako. I don't know how If I could manage this without your help," he said.

Takeru was working on a project for the Intercollegiate Science Fair and had requested the older girl's help in organizing his data report.

"No problem," she answered dreamily. "Besides, Ken will be participating too, right?"

Takeru sweatdropped at that comment. Miyako was still as infatuated as ever with the boy genius who would undoubtedly be participating. She had, of course, latched onto the occasion to try and catch his attention.

"He's probably going to win, as usual," Poromon added. "He seems to win everything he chooses to get involved into."

"Hey! I can still hope, can't I?" Takeru protested weakly.

"Sure, you can. We wouldn't want you any other way!" Miyako cheered him up.

Takeru hadn't even expected his project to be selected in the first place. Japanese was his best subject, not chemistry! He shook his head. Unfortunately, the movement caused his hands to shake and a quantity of water to spill to the ground. He cursed under is breath.

"Why are we taking water here, anyway?" Patamon asked.

"Yeah," Poromon added, "wouldn't it be much easier to just turn the tap and take water from there?"

"I told you already, Patamon. That wouldn't really make for interesting results since we do know what's in tap water," Takeru sighed.

"So what's down there that wouldn't be in tap water?"

Patamon had never quite grasped why, in the Real World, some water was supposed to be drinkable (a totally new concept for him), and some not.

"Well, that, to begin with," Takeru retorted, pointing to a huge sewer opening into the dock's side.

Patamon stared at the sewage slowly dripping into the bay, then began to fly around in circle, panicking.

"Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! I _touched_ that! I touched it! Give me soap, water, a wet towelette ,something!"

Takeru, Poromon and Miyako stared at the flying digimon. Patamon eventually stopped long enough to glare at them.

"What?"

"You..."

"Of course I can recognize a sewer when I see one!" Patamon protested loudly. "These things are full of Numemon! Don't you remember?"

Takeru's memory was wrenched back to his first adventure in the Digital World and Factory Town. Andromon had showed them a way out through sewers that did, indeed, turn out to be inhabited by dozens of Numemon. He chuckled.

"Sorry. Sometimes I forget there are things that actually _are_ alike between our worlds."

At this point, Miyako turned toward an alley.

"Guys? I think someone is coming that way..."

The sound of very rapid footsteps was rapidly compounded by a dust cloud as a silhouette swooshed past them. The turn of event left Miyako blinking as her beret, which had been carried away in the sudden burst of wind, toppled to the ground. Takeru cursed loudly as the runner toppled the test-tube holders and the beaker, sending his carefully measured samples on the cold concrete. Patamon pressed his nub arms against his ears to avoid hearing the words both the boy and his mothers had forbidden him to use.

"Was that... Daisuke?" Miyako asked.

"If you ask me, the blue giggling Digimon on the shoulder is a dead giveaway," Poromon answered.

"He didn't even notice us," Miyako observed.

She bent down and collected her hat.

"Could have told you that myself..." Takeru said between his teeth as he collected the fallen glassware.

"What is he doing here?" Patamon asked.

"No idea..." Miyako answered.

She looked at the way the boy was headed (or in this case, headed and full-bodied) and her eyes widened. Daisuke was resolutely climbing down a maintenance ladder to the sewer opening.

"Takeru, quick! We have to follow him! Whatever he wants to do, it can't end well!"

She grabbed his arm and pulled the protesting boy up.

"Miyako! And my project? It's not like Daisuke is going to cause much trouble down there."

She looked back at him with a raised eyebrows.

"Takeru, it's _Daisuke_ we're talking about," Poromon voiced his partner's concerns.

Takeru sweatdropped.

"Maybe you're right..."

Miyako was already resolutely walking away from him. He shook his head, shoved the material in his bag and went after her, reaching the girl just as she started climbing down ladder steps embedded in the concrete.

"And my project?" he asked tentatively.

She made a thumbs up at him.

"I promise you we'll get down to it as soon as we're done sorting whatever Daisuke's got himself into."

They eventually got down into the sewer's entrance. It was a large and damp storm drain that could easily have held Ikkakumon inside. The darkness was only mitigated by the occasional light let down through street drains. There was no apparent trace of Daisuke save for footsteps in the slime covering the ground.

"I wish I'd taken my D-Terminal..." Miyako commented as she advanced in the darkness.


	3. Left in the dark

**Faked witty disclaimer:** I don't own anything.

**Note:** I'm not really proud of this chapter, but I hope to make up for it in the next one. Circéus out.

Daisuke's eyes widened at the sight. The large, riveted and riveting tunnels, the slime and grime, the damp darkness... It was the coolest place he'd ever been! His partner always had the best ideas. Which was a given since he was, well _his_ partner, and Daisuke always had the best ideas. A part of his mind tried to point out the chocolate bunny incident, but Daisuke just shoved it aside so he could cram half a candy bar in his mouth. He handed his partner the other's half, eliciting squeals of delight from the digimon.

Chibimon munched on the sweet with a pensive look. Once he was done licking his lips, hands, and the various other body parts where chocolate had managed to land itself, he spoke:

"Hey, Daisuke, what are we looking for exactly?"

"Sewer crocodiles," Daisuke answered.

He pointed the flashlight down another tunnel. A few leaves hanging off a broken branch glistened back at him.

"And what's a sewer crocodile?" Chibimon asked, unadulterated.

Daisuke had to pause for a second before he remembered his partner didn't know much about Real World biology.

"Remember that show we watched last week? 'Hazardous Gators'?"

"Oh! oh! You mean the one where that guy got eaten alive?" the digimon squee-ed gleefully at the memory.

"Yeah, that one," Daisuke nodded.

He stalked down the tunnel. They had now left the main sewer and were slowly making their way down in the labyrinth that was the secondary drains.

"So _that_ was a crocodile? The thing that looked like an Airdramon, but with legs and no wings?"

"Actually, it was an alligator, but nobody in their right mind can make the difference," Daisuke confirmed.

_I bet Jun could, if only to spite me,_ he though by himself.

"And so, sewer crocodiles are alligators that lives down here?" Chibimon gave their surrounding an appraising look. "Doesn't look very practical to me. There aren't that many people to eat down there," he commented.

Daisuke down at that comment. Chibimon did have a point. What _did_ sewer crocodiles eat, anyway? He'd always dismissed these kinds of question as pointless, but now that the answer might end up including him, he wasn't so eager to ignore them anymore. He'd always thought that rats were plentiful down there, but so far he hadn't even heard the typical skittering that would announce their presence. Not that Daisuke had any idea what such a skittering sounded like in real life, he had seen enough movies still to have a good mental representation of it. But so far, the only thing around that had made any noise was Chibimon. THe digimon chose that very moment to speak.

"Hey, Daisuke?"

The sudden breach of silence startled Daisuke and he jumped aside, forcing his partner to grab at his hair to avoid falling down into the disgusting water. Daisuke breathed deeply and wiped the sweat from his brow. Chibimon giggled at his partner's antics

"_What?_" he grumbled, angry at his own failings.

"You've got your 'What if' face," the digimon pointed out.

Daisuke could hear and identify every single word in the utterance, but for the life of him, it made absolutely no sense.

"Excuse me?" he asked with a shake of the head.

"You're worrying over nothing," Chibimon explained. "What happened last time something tried to eat you that shouldn't have?"

Daisuke though over to his first coming to the Digital World, when he had met the lizard. He remembered the huge grey dinosaur Taichi had called a Monochromon. V-mon had saved him back them. And he had saved Hikari too. Daisuke smirked.

"Of course. Nothing can happen to us as long as we're together!" he exclaimed.

Chibimon nodded enthusiastically.

"Yup yup. Whatever come sat us, I can always evolve and kick their sorry, scaly or whatever ass!"

The digimon struck a dramatic pause on Daisuke's shoulder. At that point, Daisuke's Digivice gave a loud flash of light.

"Chibimon evolve!" the digimon announced. "V-mon!"

When the process was over with, V-mon was sitting on his partner shoulders, fist raised. He looked down at himself, blinking.

"Too much chocolate," Daisuke stated.

"What? Not fair!" the dragon digimon complained.

He knew what that meant. He wasn't allowed to touch the candy until he had devolved. He was so busy pouting over the lost snack that he almost smacked his face when Daisuke decided to slip into an even tighter drain.

"Daisuke! Watch it! You almost knocked me down back there!" V-mon protested.

"It's because you're taller, V-mon," Daisuke retorted. "The ceiling is closer."

"Oh..."

"And thinking of it," Daisuke continued, "you're heavier too. Mind coming down? I mean, as much as I like having you 'at hand', so to speak, it's not exactly comfortable either..."

V-mon looked down at the disgusting, thick layer of slime on the ground and gulped.

"Do I really, have to?" he squeaked.

Daisuke rolled his eyes. He reached up with his arm and grabbed his digimon by the shoulder. V-mon squirmed as he was brought down to the ground.

"Come on, it's not going to open and swallow you!" Daisuke scowled him.

Of course, when he finally let his hand go, V-mon dropped in the slime and, with a slurping sound, vanished. Daisuke blinked for a second. He then crouched down, disregarding the disgusting sludge, and reached down in the hole hidden under it. He fumbled around for a few seconds until a pair of hands appeared next to his arms and grabbed at the ground. His partner, sputtering and hacking, pulled himself up, slowly turned toward him and _glared_.

"Oh, it's not gonna _swallow_ me, right," he said.

Daisuke stared at his partner. V-mon was dripping a greenish slimy substance that made him look like a mayonnaise disaster. He glared at the boy with his hands on his hips. Daisuke knew he shouldn't. He knew that would bring the worst kind of revenge unto him. But Daisuke just couldn't resist it. He exploded in laughter.

V-mon scowled and pounced. There was only so much humiliation he was willing to accept, even coming from Daisuke, and the boy knew it, so he didn't even have to feel sory about it. V-mon grabbed his barely protesting partner in a full nelson and brought his face down to...

_Squish_

Daisuke didn't quite realize what was happening until his face was slammed into the sludge. He flailed his arms arms around, all to no avail.

That was when the rats came stampeding down the tunnel.


	4. The Amazing Flying Digivice

Disclaimer attempt: Digimon is not mine. But apparently, I'm allowed to borrow them to write fanfiction. YAY!

Takeru wasn't sure what was the most unnerving between the complete silence, only occasionally broken by a dripping sound, the slow darkening as they advanced deeper in the bowels of the city or the incessant careless chattering of Patamon and Poromon.

Miyako was resolutely trampling forward as if she owned the place. She had perfected that technique over the years and it usually drew the attention of the person she looked for without requiring her to even search. Of course, it was best used in social gatherings, a term that only covers an empty storm drain if it is stretched far and wide enough to cover a minor planet.

"So, you said you didn't have your D-Terminal," the boy said for the third time.

"No I don't!" irritation was perceptible in her voice. "I didn't think I would need it because I was sure you had yours!" she explained for the third time.

"Do you have your cell phone, then?" he continued.

"No! I don't!" Miyako sighed exasperatedly. Poromon fluttered around his partner in a vain attempt to calm her. "I forgot it! It happens sometimes, you know! Besides, I don't think I'd have reception down here."

Takeru let his head hang down. This was not going to end well at all. Then he looked up, his hopes rekindled.

"You have your D-3, at least?" he asked.

"Is Ichijouji Ken cute?" Miyako retorted with a voice so heavy with sarcasm it could have been used for weightlifting. "I always keep my D-3 when Poromon is around."

"Same here," Takeru commented. "Except with Patamon, not Poromon," he felt obligated to specify.

"And your point is?" Miyako asked him back.

Having been the butt of ridiculous questions all this time had made her hungry for revenge. In any form.

"My point is that it would be more efficient to use our D-3s to locate Daisuke than just stalking around randomly," Takeru deadpanned.

The older girl's reaction was... interesting to say the least. She raised a finger in an indignant gesture that stopped in mid-air, her foot floating a good feet above the ground in a position that no laws of physics would have allowed to remain static (but then Miyako was known to consider rules as guidelines, not limits). For a second, Patamon was tempted to poke the girl in the side, but he was afraid that might cause her to topple over in the murky water. Poromon flew to his partner's face and waved his wings in front of her eyes. He couldn't avoid to. Had he stopped, he would have dropped to the ground, which was a scary prospect. The red was slowly taking over Miyako's face, much like paint sprawled around by a lazy artist. Poromon backed away when the temperature began to raise near her skin.

"Ooooohhh... If she keeps that up, we won't even need a flashlight," Patamon commented.

Just as he said that, the girl's foot stomped on the ground, creating a small tsunami, and he finger whipped down so fast Poromon could swear there was a whipcrack. She turned around and pointed at her friend.

"Rightio!"

The three others stared as she extracted her D-3 with a large flourish. The girl's fingers fumbled and the device went airborne at high speed. Poromon dodged the projectile out of pure reflexes, but could not avoid Miyako's shoulder as she dove after her digivice, and he fell to the ground with a squishing sound and a disgusted cry. The piece of hardware collided with the wall and went in another direction, with Miyako still in hot pursuit. Takeru observed as the girls nearly missed the red D-3, who flew higher. In his direction.

"Uh, Takeru..." Patamon warned from atop the boy's trademark Gilligan hat.

But it was already too late. Takeru, unaware of the impending catastrophe, reached out to catch the flying device while Patamon took to the air, having no interest in being part of it. The Digivice landed neatly in the boy's extended hand, followed very shortly after by a tall violet-haired girl. The collision knocked both down in the slime. Crash of broken glass echoed in the tunnel.

Miyako looked up slowly. Her eyes met with the towering glower of Takeru's most highly annoyed look. She gave a sheepish grin.

"So-" she begin.

Takeru, however, didn't allow her to finish her sentence.

"You're paying to replace the glassware," he stated.

A blushing Miyako relented to despair and let her face plop back down into the boy's stomach. The blond gave a sigh and pushed her off so he could get up. They looked down at their slime-coated clothes and sighed again.

"Let's just find Daisuke and get home, please?" Miyako implored the higher forces.

That boy was _so_ getting it.

"There's your D-3," Takeru said, handing her the device.

Miyako nodded and activated the tracking mode. She saw the red dot representing herself, as well as a green one identifying Takeru. The blue dot had to be Daisuke. She turned around in an effort to locate the direction to the boy's position and, once that was done, pointed in that direction.

"That-a-way!" she exclaimed with a recovered (if bruised) enthusiasm.

Takeru, Patamon and Poromon blinked.

"Errrr..." Takeru hesitated. "As much as it would be interesting to witness, Miyako, I'm afraid none of us has the capacity to walk through walls."

Miyako let her arms drop to her side in distress. _Why me?_ she thought as she moved along in search of a tunnel going in the right direction. She did not notice a fourth, purple dot appearing on the screen and moving in their direction, pushing the blue dot of Daisuke and V-mon. When she found a tunnel going in the right direct, she began to hear voices in there and happily motioned for the boy to come over.

"Takeru, I think we've found them!"

That was when the rats came stampeding down the tunnel.


	5. Pest Control

Disclaimer: Digimon's not mine. I'm far too scared of the fanbrats.

Daisuke's primary concern was his sludge-covered face. The vile-smelling... substance, for lack of a better word, was every-friggin-where: in his eyes, his ears, his hair, up his nose and, the gods forbid, coating his mouth. V-mon was twisting his arm behind his back, and Daisuke would have been proud of the little guy had he not been the one stuck in the incredibly strong grip. At that point, hundreds of small paws appeared out of nowhere and Daisuke knew he was in a pickle. A dirty, dirty pickle. As if to confirm that sentiment, V-mon somehow wrestled the struggling boy into pressing his face in the... muddy substance a _second_ time.

Getting revenge was always sweet, but there was only so much misery V-mon was okay with inflicting upon his partner, no matter how much they might both have to wade through because of Daisuke. They always pulled it off in the end, didn't they? His thoughts were suddenly interrupted with the chittering and... _squishy_ sound of hundreds upon hundreds of rodents.

_Khumbiramon?_ the dragon digimon first thought.

His partner's screaming, however, rapidly corrected that.

"Rats! Ack! Ack!"

As a matter of principles, Daisuke was not scared of creatures smaller then himself. He admitted to caution at best (such as when faced with a shinai-wielding Iori), but not _fear_. Small creatures didn't eat big ones, after all, did they? Okay, there had been that program on parasites that had left him seriously... _worried_ about raw beef, but he was over it now. Daisuke was not normally scared of creatures smaller than himself. In theory.

In practice, stuck in the dark, smelly bowels of Tokyo like a roundworm in a three-days dead piece of livestock, without any source of light after the flashlight had fallen off in the mud, and with small, noisy mammals running all over him, their mouths chittering fractions of inches away from his skin, Daisuke was scared. Scared like the turtle fated to soon meet the ground at high. Daisuke was terrorized just like that day he'd been faced with a 30-feet long Monochromon (Now _that_ was something worth getting scared over!) The boy sprung up, his partner being propelled through the musky air like an Aki ball. The digimon unceremoniously flung his arms around his partner's neck and let his body bump into Daisuke's back.

And the screeching and moaning coming down the tunnel weren't helping either. The only thing Daisuke could compare it to was a duet of Agumon and Jun singing under the shower and being interrupted by by the girl's wails of pain as the lizard stomped on her foot. Daisuke spared a precious half-second to thoroughly obliterate the thought of his sister and Agumon in the shower before he came back to the matter at end.

A hand dashed and collected, first a rat, which was launched in the distance with a soprano scream V-mon never would have believed his partner capable of, then a flashlight that was hastily cleaned. And there was light. And Daisuke saw that it could have been better.

A moving carpet of small creature scurried down the tunnel, far too scared to do so much as look at the boy, much less munch on him. This matter secured, Daisuke took matter and digimon in his own hands and, V-mon safely tucked under his left arm, dashed down the corridor as if all the demons of hell (or at least a single, noisy one) were after him. The yelling rapidly decreased to a less hairdress-revising level.

"Daisuke?" the digimon suddenly piped up.

"What?" Daisuke panted back between two breaths.

"I thought we were _looking for_ sewer crocodile!"

Daisuke glanced behind himself and didn't see a thing.

"Tell you what, I'm not so sure anymore!"

Before V-mon could protest more, he added:

"Of course, if you insist, I can plop you here so you can have a look at whatever's scared the shit out of all these rats first hand."

V-mon gulped and shook his head.

"I sort of like the prospect of seeing the outside light again, actually," he squeaked. "Which way is 'outside', anyway?"

Now it was Daisuke's turn to gulp. Sure, he had figured he could trace his way back to the entrance whenever he wanted, and had mentally kept track of every turn and nook the pair had taken with that in mind. However, in their panicked escape, that had been all unceremoniously flung out the window much like a yakuza's recently earned money. Having taken a side-tunnel to recover some lost breath, Daisuke let his head drop.

"I _think_ it should be this way," he pointed in a random direction.

V-mon's mouth formed into a mute "O," but before he could say anything, the pair was submerged with a foul smell far worse than the one exhaled by the grime they were still mostly covered in. Just as their nose was closing the lock and shutting down, the same screeching and moaning that had been moving along terrorized herds of musical-minded rats began to echo down that bit of tunnel. The human and digimon looked at each others with the same look of you've-gotta-be-friggin-joking-me disbelief.

The screeching reverberated between the metallic viscers of their prison like the hypnotic chant of a priest holding a sacrificial dagger. While the image would have, in any other circumstance, brought sniggers to the boys, it now only made them shake harder. They took off and dashed down the tunnel again, only caring to put as much distance between themselves and the no doubt roswellian horror (because Daisuke, as one would expect, knows nothing of lovecraftian horrors) swearing in some forgotten language that it would... Well, maybe all it wanted was to take them and pet them and give them a good bath, but the pair was far too scared to consider this possibility.

When _another_, higher-pitched screech came from somewhere in front of them, Daisuke really started to wonder why he had wanted to come down there in the first place.

* * *

Somewhere else, on the black screen of a red D-3 digivice, a blue and a purple dot were rapidly approaching a pair of green and red dots. 


End file.
